The term “digital evidence” refers to any information or data that can be used in legal proceedings, investigations, or audits. For the most part, we interact with it in our daily lives, but it can take various forms beyond those usual data types, including:

• Text data: Emails, text messages, chat logs, and documents of different types.
• Multimedia: Photos, videos, audio recordings, and animations.
• Online Activities: Social media posts, website history, and online communications.
• Device and System Data: This is more specific and usually is not used in everyday life, but is really relevant for Law Enforcement. The category includes information from computers, smartphones, IoT devices, and surveillance cameras.

The importance of digital evidence has grown exponentially as technology has advanced, and it now serves as a critical resource for solving crimes, resolving disputes, and ensuring compliance. But this brings a couple of challenges with it.

To cope with all the previous challenges, a DEMS needs to be able collect, store, preserve, analyze, and present digital evidence while maintaining its integrity and authenticity. The last two are especially important, because the prove the data has not been altered in any way, and it comes from a known and reliable source. This preservation not only covers the actual data, but also the metadata extracted from it during the analysis phase.

Due to the amount of files that usually have to be analyzed, artificial intelligence analyzers are used normally to comb through all the data in order to find the evidence we need in the available amount of time. No human could ever check 600 hours of video by hand looking for evidence. But a machine can do it in a couple of minutes or, at the most, hours. For example, our own Intelion DEMS.

All of this defines a series of features that every DEMS should have to integrate seamlessly in the workflow of police investigations. The first step is always the gathering and storage of information from different relevant sources. In this step it is very important to use sound methods to prevent contamination or alteration of the digital evidence. After this, all the information has to be stored securely, with a really strict access, for only those people directly involved with the case at hand.

The step that all investigators usually appreciate most, is the analysis step. In this phase all the evidence is analyzed either by hand or, more frequently, with AI analyzers, that can work in an unattended manner, on multiple files at a time. This step is one of the most important ones, as it serves to extract meaningful insights or establish connections between pieces of information. Digital forensics tools and techniques can also be employed in this phase, when necessary.

The last step is the presentation phase, where all the findings are compiled into a summary, in order to present the evidence in a clear and understandable manner. This may involve creating reports, charts, or presentations for judges, juries or other Law Enforcement agencies or branches.

During all this process, maintaining the Chain of Custody (CoC) is very important, in order to keep the validity of the found evidence. This entails maintaining a secure and documented record to demonstrate that the evidence has not been tampered with or mishandled during its lifecycle. All accesses to the information must be registered, any change or modification logged and the files have to be digitally signed after their upload, to disallow any later modification. Only this way the evidence will hold in court.

Madrid, August 30, 2023. ISID, a technology company focused on AI solutions and platforms for advanced video and audio storage and analysis, attended the seminar “Implementing the strategic compass: challenges and opportunities” that was held on August 30 in Toledo, organized by the spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation.

The High Representative for EU Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, João Gomes Cravinho, as well as the Minister of Defense of the Netherlands, Kajsa Ollongren all attended, as well as various representatives of the European defense industry.

The central topic of the seminar has been the “Strategic Compass”, the first white paper of the European Union for security and defense, which was approved by the European Council in March 2022. This initiative represents an action plan to strengthen security and defense policy of the European Union until 2030. The current instability in the European periphery (the war in Ukraine) has provoked this response from the Union, setting guidelines to improve the security of the eurozone over the coming years.

The event, attended by our own Alfredo Ramírez, BD & Sales Director of ISID, was inaugurated by José Manuel Albares, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation and Margarita Robles acting Minister of Defense, at the Toledo Congress Palace.

In general, a Smart City is one that uses Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and IoT (Internet of Things) sensors to help run the different operations needed in the city. However, there is no strict definition, as the technology itself is evolving and different uses of it are made in different cities, and so every Smart City can be slightly different from the next one. However, there are many common areas that benefit from the use of technology, despite the different specific uses of those technologies in each case:

• Energy Grid. Supplying electricity to all the inhabitants and businesses of a city is no mean feat. That is why most Smart Cities use Smart Grid technology, combining a series of energy sources, with a trend in incrementing the sustainable ones.
• Environment and pollution. The more people that live in a city, the more important air quality becomes. That’s why all of the Smart Cities have sensors over all the metropolitan area to measure CO2, ozone, the water quality and other parameters.
• Waste disposal. Having several millions of people concentrated in the same area generates a lot of waste, the city has to get rid of. To minimize the logistics involved, there are initiatives with sensors in garbage containers, to optimize the route of the trucks, picking up only full containers, for example.
• Public transport. Having a good public transport system is vital to reduce overall private traffic and helps driving costs down with optimized routes and timetables, all based on real-time geolocation of the vehicles, for statistical analysis.
• Traffic. Closely related to the previous item, traffic is one of the main priorities of any city government. Cameras that control traffic density can help to change the timing on traffic lights to improve flow. Or to create fast routes for emergency vehicles.
• Health. Another major point is the management of all the sanitary and health care infrastructure.
• Civil protection. This includes disaster alerts & responses for floods, storms, fires, etc. and the management of firefighting forces and the like.
• Safe City. This is also one of the critical areas and is usually more related to Law Enforcement, but can also include some of the previous areas, like civil protection, traffic management and environment. This includes urban video surveillance.

As we said in the opening, the world population is migrating from rural areas to cities at an unprecedented pace. According to the World Bank, by 2045 there will be 6 billion people living in cities.  The UN has a similar forecast, with 68% of humans living in cities by 2050. This puts pressure on the local administrations of those cities, as they not only have to cope with today’s problems, but also have to be prepared for the growth of the next two decades.

That is why Law Enforcement usually resorts to help in the form of artificial intelligence to be able to have 24/7 surveillance and don’t miss anything of importance. The two main ways are:

• using intelligent cameras, which have some form of “simple” AI integrated and only send images to the Control Center when something out of the ordinary happens, which reduces the amount of visual information generated. By a lot.
• using standard cameras, which are connected to a VMS (Video Management System) who is in charge of the recordings and general management of the cameras. However, almost no VMS has AI integrated.

And that is where our Intelion comes into play. It’s a platform for massive and unattended analysis of video and audio. It can work 24/7 on multiple input channels and find all the information Law Enforcement needs or may be interested in: faces, number plates, suspicious movements or actions, etc. On top of that, the system is able to backtrack any element ( number plates, faces, objects) through all the connected cameras and time (recordings) to reconstruct the path a certain vehicle or person have taken before an event (accident, crime, etc.) of interest. Intelion creates reports with all the found information and generates alarms to alert the appropriate officers or people in charge when something of interest is found.

As we said in the opening, the world population is migrating from rural areas to cities at an unprecedented pace. According to the World Bank, by 2045 there will be 6 billion people living in cities.  The UN has a similar forecast, with 68% of humans living in cities by 2050. This puts pressure on the local administrations of those cities, as they not only have to cope with today’s problems, but also have to be prepared for the growth of the next two decades.